Elon Musk Says We Must Become Cyborgs To Interface With Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk was in Dubai on February 13th to officially announce that Tesla would soon open a showroom there and is working to install 5 new Superchargers in the United Arab Emirates. Musk being Musk, he didn’t fly halfway around the world just to cut a ceremonial ribbon. He also addressed the World Government Summit in Dubai while he was there. Here is some of what he had to say.

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told his audience. “It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”

Computers can communicate at “a trillion bits per second.” Humans, on the other hand, who do most of their communicating by typing on various digital devices with their fingers, are limited to a woeful 10 bits per second. As artificial intelligence technology improves, as some point humans will become irrelevant. That’s why they must learn to merge with machines, according to Musk. “Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,” Musk explained.

Musk has spoken often on his deep seated fear of deep artificial intelligence. That is intelligence that goes far beyond systems that can make cars drive themselves all the way to what he calls “artificial general intelligence.” He describes it as “smarter than the smartest human on earth” and calls it a “dangerous situation.” The technology he proposes would create a new layer in the human brain that could access information quickly and tap into artificial intelligence.

“The most near term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars … That is going to happen much faster than people realize and it’s going to be a great convenience,” Musk said. He claims that within 20 years, up to 15% of the world’s workforce will be rendered redundant by artificial intelligence. “There are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people — driving in various forms. So we need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick.”

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